Emmitt isn’t writing now, is staring at me with a rather pitiful look. “What did you think would happen with Elizabeth?” he asks. “Did you expect she wouldn’t leave?”
“But I didn’t think anything,” I made clear. “Obviously, I didn’t think at all.”
“So you never planned to play the way you did?”
“I already told you. You don’t honestly think I did it on purpose?”
Emmitt lifts his head, his gaze clinical, and by way of answering says, “I read the book you loaned me. Not all of it. Not yet. It’s not a text to read straight through, but most of it. What do you think of the line: ‘Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.’ Do you agree with that?”
I consider the query, not surprised that out of the entire book, with all its historical and philosophical significance, Emmitt has singled out this one passage.
“The quote is a puzzle,” Emmitt continues. “As a syllogism, it doesn’t work. How can Man ever simultaneously be the very thing he denies? Man can only be what he is and not what he isn’t, and yet, as Man is a cognitive rather than instinctive creature, he has the freedom to choose a course of conduct he might otherwise object to. If a person refuses to act as they know is best, if they compromise and sacrifice their convictions for fear or folly or worse, have they become what they are or are they still someone else?”
Before I reply, I stare down at my hands and think of my last night with Liz, and as a consequence of what I remember, I answer as honestly as possible, and say to Emmitt, “Yes. Without a doubt.”
That Monday, Niles took his one final exam—a graduate seminar examining the principles of Parmenides in which the class was asked to explore the issue of time and space being illusions of the senses, and “What then is real?” Professor Lucy Tius posed. He handed in the first draft of his master’s thesis for review, his paper entitled “The Subjectivity of Truth: Kierkegaard’s Unhappiest Man and Memory as Avoidance and Ruse,” and went home to pack, filling his duffle with jeans and shorts, underwear, shirts and socks, toiletries and bandages, a copy each of Camus’ The Rebel and A Happy Death tucked beside the file from Massinissa Alilouche.
I monitored my students’ exams on Tuesday, asking them as part of 100 multiple-choice questions to distinguish between the significance of Clyfford Still and the comparatively lesser works of Sam Francis, to identify Jean Fautrier’s Hostage, to trace connective links from Bauhaus and surrealism to post-painterly and abstract expressionism, and whether North America (1966) was produced by Jack Tworkov, Morris Louis, or Barnett Newman. At four o’clock I invited my class to Dungee’s, where I provided the first pitchers of beer and played a soulful rendition of Freddie Hubbard’s “Little Sunflower,” Victor Young’s “Street of Dreams,” and Albert Brumley’s “I’ll Fly Away.” Time passed and people danced.
Elizabeth flew to Europe the following afternoon. I graded my students’ exams and left the next night with Niles. We were scheduled to land in London at ten, depart Heathrow into Bechar and head for Algiers later that evening, where Niles arranged for us to travel by train across the High Plateaux and western edge of the Saharan Atlas, up through Oran and northeast for a distance of some five hundred miles, “To get a feel for where we are,” he said.
Our flight into London arrived on time, but our plane to Bechar departed an hour late, and reaching North Africa we went immediately by bus to catch our train. Niles struggled beneath the weight of his duffle and the video camera he brought as we raced from the terminal into the hot street. Our bus was almost full, nearly every inch of space occupied, including the overhead rack and the aisle where more than a dozen people paid to stand with their possessions stored between their feet. We jockeyed for position while stumbling against one another like stones tossed together in a sack, tipped and bounced until we arrived thirty minutes later at the train station which was but an outpost made up of three sand-colored walls and several short wooden benches.
A thin man in a long cotton shirt and dark trousers, flecks of white and grey whiskers on his dark cheeks and a dense mustache swooping down from his upper lip like a scythe stood behind a counter where it was possible to buy pieces of flat bread, a roasted meat called mishwi, and rice. Niles ordered our food—he also asked the man to wrap two meat sandwiches for the train—and we ate our meal standing inside. Afterward, we stretched our legs along the gravel path to the left of the station. Another busload of people arrived and took up space on the platform, groups of families and men traveling alone, their belongings packed in many different sorts of luggage, from ancient leather bags to quilts tied up and knotted with twine. A small boy lay sleeping on one such bundle when the train pulled in—an hour late—the noise startling him and immediately he began to cry. Two men on the near side of the platform looked over and laughed while three women came at once and comforted the child.
Niles bought tickets for a private compartment but the idea of being left in peace was impossible to enforce as the door had no lock and people routinely invaded our space: travelers wishing to escape the public cars, others hoping to sell trinkets of jewelry, sunglasses, and wine, an old man with a metal box chained around his waist offering to exchange our American currency at a rate of 9DA to the dollar though we were already required to exchange 125 American dollars for 1,000DA as we arrived in Bechar. After an hour or so, another man in a green shirt, black slacks, and brown shoes came in and dropped beside me on the seat. His breathing was raspy and there was the odor of fever about him. He begged our forgiveness, but asked if he might just sit a moment. “I don’t travel well,” he said in Arabic which Niles translated for my benefit.
Our compartment was small, no more than five feet square, and the addition of a third body drove what little fresh air there was back out through the door. The train itself was old and rattled along the iron tracks, causing the man to bump his elbow against my side and press against me hip to hip on the seat. “Possibly, it’s all in my head,” the man referred to his trouble with travel and coughed into a white piece of cloth. “I don’t know. I am otherwise a very active person. I have a beautiful wife and many friends. I own a small business selling and repairing furniture and musical instruments. If not for things beyond my control I would move to the city and be done with these trips, but for now I have no choice.”
Aside from his current affliction, the man did not seem to be suffering from any real illness. He had the sinewy musculature of a runner, the appearance of someone whose energy rarely betrayed him. His dark eyes were quick and alert even through his fever, while his voice, if a bit raspy, did not sound altogether weak. “Twice a month I’m forced to travel,” the man continued. “Four days out of every thirty I spend this way. As to why it bothers me so, I can’t say. I’ve been to many doctors who insist there’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve taken pills to alleviate motion sickness and similar traumas, but even when I’m drugged near the point of passing out, nothing helps.”
Niles asked the man a series of questions in Arabic, wondering about his business, about his family, and the history of his aversion to travel. He translated for me, restated the man’s confusion about his condition. “Anah mish ahrif layh (I do not know why).” After several minutes of listening to the man’s complaint, I still did not understand and asked Niles to translate, “I don’t get it. If traveling is so hard for you and no one can find a cure, why not move closer to Algiers? Or hire someone to go for you? Why put yourself through such torture?”
“But I told you,” the man repeated. “Certain things are beyond my control. I have no choice,” and getting up from his seat, he thanked us again for allowing him to sit inside our compartment, bowed twice, and turning away from me then, he reached inside the small valise he had with him and produced a jeweled dagger, the stones were actually glass but shined beautifully nonetheless in the light through the window. “A gift,” he held the knife out to Niles, “for your kindness.” Niles tried to refuse but the man insisted, and turning on his heels, made his exit.
The train ascended a steep hill and the motion of our car shook in protest to the climb. Niles put the dagger inside the bag with his video camera and shrugged his shoulders as if there was nothing more to be said about the man. I considered drawing attention to the coincidence of the man’s condition and Niles’ own peculiar affliction, but not quite sure what to make of it, I decided to let the subject drop.
Niles reached into his duffel for a tube of ointment and fresh gauze, stood and lifted his shirt in order to apply a new dressing to the wound on his stomach. He discarded the old bandage inside a small paper bag that he then buried back in his duffel. As he finished with the salve, he sat down and searched for his dog-eared copy of A Happy Death. Although it was well after midnight—and later still in Renton—he seemed not yet ready for sleep, and finding a favorite part in the novel where Camus’ protagonist first goes for a dip in the sea, he read aloud how Mersault “lost himself in order to find himself again, swimming in that warm moonlight in order to silence what remained of the past, to bring to birth the deep song of his happiness.”
I untied my boots and stuck them under my seat, listening to Niles while shifting closer to the window. I stared outside at the endless expanse of purple black sky dotted by pearl bright stars, and pressing my nose against the glass, felt the motion of the train while experiencing the reality of moving farther and farther from home. I thought again of Liz and tried to make sense of what happened, considered the quickness of my mistake and speed of my own departure, how I went from a state of absolute dormancy to hurtling along in a blind kinetic whirl.
“We travel with such velocity these days that the most we can do is to remember a few places names. The freight of metaphysical speculation will have to catch up with us by slow train, if it catches up with us at all.” The quote appeared in a story I read on the plane, a cautionary tale in The Collected Stories of John Cheever, and staring outside again, I thought how true this was in terms of Liz and Niles and all the rest, the speculation I felt over what I was doing in relation to each, the velocity of my trip such that even my most intimate impressions were slow to reach me.
I dozed then and woke with the sun just starting to rise outside the window. Niles was asleep with his legs spread out and his head tipped back against the top of his seat as I got up quietly, slipped on my shoes, and went off in search of a bathroom. After this, I stood outside on the small platform connecting our car to the one in front and smoked a Turkish cigarette from the pack bought the night before. The sun stirred from behind a dense range of mountains, the morning air dry and warm, filled with the smell of esparto grass and the unexpected scent of salt and ash. In the High Plateaux, several pastures of blue green alfa waved lazily in coordinated rows, though for the most part sand was dominant, blowing across the tracks and scratching against the underside of the train.
We cut through a canyon of stone, followed shortly by an orchard of palm trees. I leaned into the metal rail as the train ascended and descended and saw fit to take me, the wheels below making a steady grinding sound that vibrated up through the floor. I gripped tight and looked out toward the horizon where two men suddenly appeared shepherding some twenty goats. Surprised—for I had no idea where they came from nor where they were headed—I watched until the train angled around yet another curve in the track, passing through morning shadows that stretched out elliptically and changed my view altogether.
I crushed my cigarette against the rail, and gauging the speed of the train, wondered if it was possible to lower myself over the side and land safely on the ground without too much damage. The idea of being completely lost this way, so many thousands of miles from home and just one thin metal barrier removed from being utterly abandoned, appealed to me briefly, though in the end I came to my senses and chose to stay on board. My decision caused me to think back to last night and how the man with the fever insisted, “I have no choice,” when asked about his own course of travel. The claim seemed so preposterous at first, given how easily the man might have otherwise resisted boarding the train, that I couldn’t bring myself to show compassion. What troubled me most was the way it seemed that, if a person had no choice, they had no reason to feel tortured by what they were doing. A person became fevered, melancholy and remorseful not because of circumstances beyond their control but when choices made—or not made—turned out to be in error. This was why I regret what happened with Liz, because I sensed I didn’t choose to behave the way I wanted.
And yet, standing there I couldn’t help but wonder what if, in some crude way, the man was right? What if there were times we had no choice and what did this say then about my recent blunders? Perhaps I had no choice but to play Roslavets as I did, and as such mangle my affair with Liz. I thought about this for a while, and feeling no better from the possibility of such complete surrender, stared further out in the desert where I spotted three dunes rolling end to end, their curves in an erotic sort of undulation. I pictured Elizabeth laid out in the sands, propped up on her hip and shoulder, imagined her asleep in Spain, in her hotel room, naked atop the smooth white sheets while first the moon and then the sun glowed over her. I watched her sleep, anticipated her every breath and slightest movement until all at once I remembered Niles dozing in our compartment and dashed inside.
The train chose that moment to pitch left and I lost my balance in the aisle, falling against the arm of a snoozing man who woke up cursing. I ran on, already envisioning Niles with the point of a pen jabbed into his neck and the blood everywhere mocking me for being so careless. Terrified, I tossed open the door, relieved to find Niles sitting with his camera filming the desert through the window. “Fuck,” I panted. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
Niles switched his camera off and put it back in its case, the light from the early morning sky white and gleaming. “It’s OK,” he said. “I’m fine.” The train ran on. I sank down in my seat. We were now a half mile up the track from where I first rushed inside, the dunes that reminded me of Elizabeth out of view. Niles reached for the bag with our meat sandwiches, and offering me half, repeated a bit too enthusiastically, “I’m great, really.”
Eight hours later we arrived in Algiers. The main railway station was located at the port near the Gare Martime. At mid-afternoon the buildings seemed a fortress set against the dark green water of the bay. On one side, by the El Djazair islets and the Hot de la Marine, was a lighthouse, the glow from its beacon extinguished, the road leading away from the marina dividing the old Turkish harbor and the Darse de l’Amiraute where, despite the poverty of the region, a handful of lavish yachts were moored to the docks. Niles reserved a room at the Sahel on the Rue Drouillet, and we took a cab across the Admiralty Causeway into the heart of the city, where the streets were crowded with pedestrians and small Italian- and Spanish-made cars. (In contrast to the urban tangle, a few miles farther south at Ouargla and Touchourt people still lived as their ancestors did a thousand years before, in goat-hair tents, nomadic in their movement, shifting as easily as sand.) The desk clerk at the Sahel was indifferent to our arrival, the tourist trade in Algiers having declined so far in recent years the city no longer felt a need to cater to travelers.
Niles paid for three nights stay in advance. (As the one most determined to travel, and as his resources far exceeded mine, Niles most generously offered to cover all expenses of our trip in total.) Our room was moderately sized, with two beds, a wooden chair covered by a flat blue cushion, a tall beige dresser whose open drawers emitted a scent of cedar. A large fan turned overhead, doing little to cool the air. A fly soared several times from wall to wall before landing upside down on the ceiling. The bathroom had a half-sized tub, emerald green tiles, and polished silver piping. After we showered and washed the sand and sweat from our trip down the drain, we went to a small restaurant a few blocks from the hotel where we sat outside and had dinner.
Naive to the customs, I asked for whiskey then settled for juice. Niles was quiet, his coloring off and eyes narrowed as if pinching back an ache. He spoke only to answer questions I put to him about his plans to take his camera and explore the city in the morning, and later as he asked about my strategy for finding Timbal. I had no idea really, had thought of contacting the American consulate and local wire service, had the name of a café Timbal allegedly liked to frequent—the information provided from an article now two years old—but other than that I’d not given the matter any thought.
We finished our meal and before returning to the Sahel wandered across the boulevards, past apartments and darkened shops, grey and white high-rises and squat adobe houses, handsome mosques columned with horseshoe arches and crowning minarets jutting up toward heaven. It was almost midnight by the time we went back to our room and dropped into bed exhausted, a rope attached between our ankles, the overhead fan gyrating like a slowly falling star. “So here we are then,” I said to Niles, hoping he’d answer and provide additional insight into what we were really doing and could expect tomorrow. In the dark, Niles was too tired to say anything however, and after a few minutes I closed my eyes. I lay very still, focusing on images where Liz sat with me at a long table shared by my father, brother, and mother, and despite the confusion that came from these half dreams, I soon managed to relax and drift off to sleep.